Disneyland

The kids and I enjoyed one final trip to Disneyland before school started. As always, it was a lot of fun! The longest we waited in a line was for Tower of Terror, and you can see it was worth the wait!



Kaleb is finally tall enough for Indiana Jones. He was very excited, until we walked into the tunnel for the line. Then he plugged his ears, and would have closed his eyes if he wasn't worried about bumping into the walls. This is a picture of him when he thought the ceiling was going to fall on us. He survived the ride with a death grip on the steering wheel. We ended up going on the ride two more times and by the third he said it was getting easier and he didn't keep his eyes closed the whole time. I'm just glad he was willing to go.

They're kind of hard to see, but we saw Miss Piggy and Kermit the frog during the parade.

Goodbye Summer

We had a great summer. I can't believe it's over! The kids loved swim lessons, and they're all ready to move to the next class.

The last few pictures are ones my mom sent from our Utah trip that I love. Thanks Mom!

Braces be Gone, and Palomar Mountain Camping

After having braces for over a year, Emily finally got them off last week. Needless to say, she was thrilled. To celebrate, we had a party with her friend Tori, where we bought all the things she hasn't been able to have for the last year. We enjoyed milk duds, tootsie rolls, skittles, mike and ikes, whoppers, twix, and pop. It was great, and no one got sick from too much junk.

This last weekend we went camping on Palomar Mountain. It is a great place to camp. The campground was first-come, first-serve, so my friend Rachel and I left Friday morning with 4 of the kids to get a good spot. After losing one site, and thinking we would have to be in the full sun all day, we found a great site with big trees and lots of shade and plenty of room. We had friendly neighbors, which was nice, since we had 6 kids running around most of the time. On Saturday we hiked up to the observatory. It was a 2.2 mile hike, which was difficult, but even the 6 year-olds made it the whole way without needing to be carried. The observatory was huge. We didn't want to pay the $8 a person fee for the tour, so we just went and looked at the telescope through the glass. One of the docents came out and answered questions and gave us some more information about the observatory. There were pictures in the museum from the telescope, and it was pretty amazing.

Here are the kids waiting to see the telescope.

On the trail down, which was much easier.

Getting ready for the campfire.

S'mores=yummy! We were also lucky that we chose the weekend when a star-gazing club was also camping. They were very willing to let all of us look through their telescopes. We saw the crators on the moon, Venus, and lots of star clusters and nebulas, and a few shooting stars. It was a great weekend!

Being a Mom

I love being a mom. It is definitely challenging, and I've learned a ton about myself that I wouldn't have otherwise, but I feel blessed, and I'm loving the age of my kids now. They're old enough to not need a lot of looking after, but still young enough to cuddle in the morning, and to get so excited about things. Mother's day was great this year. Blake and I woke up Sunday morning to breakfast in bed by Emily and Kaleb. I thought it was very sweet that they broght us both breakfast. Each of the kids gave me very sweet homemade cards that they had spent a lot of time on, and they said they were giving me two presents that I had to guess. I asked if one was that they were going to be good listeners, (yep), and asked if the second was that they were going to be nice to each other, (right again). I'm so glad they know what I want most.


I got a rose at church. We all got a kick out of how tall it was.

For part of my Mother's Day present I printed off new pictures for our frames in the frontroom. Time is going too quickly.

Blake's present to me was great. After living in our house for almost two years, I told him all I wanted was for him to hang up the stuff I had collected for our bedroom walls. I love how it turned out!

After seeing the video of Kaleb riding his bike, Emily asked if I could put a video of her on the blog. Here she is being a monkey last month when Grandma and Grandpa Torgersen came to visit. Good thing she's wearing a helmet! Also, there is a video of Kaleb reading a Mother's Day poem. I'm so glad to be a mom!

Freedom to ride!

We had a great Easter weekend with Blake's parents here. Kaleb surprised us all by starting to ride his sister's bike. Life is good, and I'm so excited for all the bike rides we're planning for this summer. Emily just got a new bike for an early birthday present, I got a beach cruiser, and we're painting Emily's old bike for Kaleb on Saturday. Now we just need to get Blake a bike and we're set.